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The pictures of this fascinating event make me unaccountably nervous. → The Strangest Desert Festival In the World Makes Everyone’s Mad Max Dreams Come True [Via Reader B.]
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“The rise of the robots has been greatly exaggerated. Whose interests does that serve?” → The Automation Charade. Pairs with: The Robots Are Coming To Las Vegas.
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The Good Place is one of my favorite television shows. Today I learned that creator Michael Schur (also co-creator of both Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) directed the ► video of the Decemberists’ “Calamity Song”, which is based on a section of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest…which Schur owns the film rights to.
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I’m a fan of reading in all its many modes and guises, but it’s worth nothing that neither paper or digital are perfect. → Neither Paper Nor Digital Does Active Reading Well
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Are almost all scientists wrong about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? → The Nastiest Feud in Science
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“The question of who is alive and who is dead is not new, but the answer is one that has changed historically.” → Who is Dead?. See also: 25 Death Masks of the famous and infamous
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Keith Houston delves into the long history of emoji and what led to them. → Emoji, part 1: in the beginning & Emoji, part 2: what went before
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Two really fine pieces of long form journalism that held me rapt this week. → From Newcastle and New Zealand to the Killing Fields of Cambodia & The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail
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A meander for your eyes (and occasionally your taste buds). → Lauren Ko’s Geometric Pies & Dinara Kasko’s Origami Cakes & Dragon Scale Bookbinding & Sylvie Facon’s Book Spine Dresses & Inside the psychiatric hospitals, churches and fields of China — in pictures
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Today in 1894, poet, painter and essayist Edward Estlin “E. E.” Cummings is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Known for his experimental language and typography, many of Cummings’ poems are traditional, even formal at heart (like today’s WORK, which is a sonnet). Previous linkage: Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation, listen to Cummings read three of his poems. They also have 85 of his poems online. Thanks to the LibraryThing community, you can browse the titles in Cummings’ own library.